Women’s Hockey League Will Pay Players for First Time

The Boston Blades’ Kate Leary, left, pursuing the Montreal Canadiennes’ Cassandra Poudrier in a Canadian Women’s Hockey League game last season.

Gretchen Ertl for The New York Times

By SETH BERKMAN

September 1, 2017

The Canadian Women’s Hockey League will pay players for the first time in its 11-year history beginning this season, the league announced Friday.

Although players will not receive full livable wages, they will earn a stipend ranging from $2,000 to $10,000. Team general managers will have a $100,000 budget to distribute among rosters, which can have up to 25 players. Additional income can be received through bonuses earned by winning team and individual awards, ranging from $1,000 to $5,000.

At a meeting of the C.W.H.L.’s general managers on Thursday, the league also agreed to increase budgets for hiring coaches and general managers and for grass-roots initiatives in each of the league’s cities. The C.W.H.L. has North American markets in Calgary; Toronto; Montreal; Markham, Ontario; and Boston.

“Each year we will build and increase all of those categories until we’ve reached a point where we can actually call it a salary,” Brenda Andress, the league’s commissioner, said.

In June, the C.W.H.L. expanded to China with the addition of Kunlun Red Star. Later in the summer, the league added a second Chinese team, the Vanke Rays. Both teams will be based in Shenzhen and are a focus of China’s push to build a contending program in time for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.

With many top Canadian and American players skipping the pro leagues this year for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, the C.W.H.L.’s move into China is a timely opportunity to grow the league’s influence.

Last year, the Kunlun Red Star men’s team began its first season in the Russian-based Kontinental Hockey League. The club was founded by Billy Ngok, who owns the private equity company Golden Brick Capital Management and China Environmental Energy Holdings.

Andress would not say if there was any direct financial investment from Chinese hockey parties that have contributed to the C.W.H.L.’s growth, but acknowledged that the league’s move into Asia has helped close major sponsorship deals, which will be announced before the season begins Oct. 14.

“Whether China came into our league or not, the sponsors we were working with and the partnerships we were working with, we planned on paying the players,” Andress said. “I think the China opportunity has given us more access, more opportunities out there.”

Several former Olympians, including the American forward Kelli Stack and the Finnish goalie Noora Raty, have committed to play for Kunlun Red Star, where their duties are expected to include grooming a Chinese women’s national team and youth teams.

Andress added that while the base stipend rules applied to all C.W.H.L. teams, the league would not dictate how players associated with the Chinese national team would be paid.

C.W.H.L. players were notified of the stipend implementations Friday morning. When asked if she was concerned that some North American-based players might become upset over a discrepancy in money and benefits for players in China, Andress said that the league worked closely with the C.W.H.L.’s players’ association on the stipend figures and the completed deal was suggested by the union.

“I kind of see it more as a bigger-picture thing,” said Kristina Brown, a forward for the Boston Blades. “I’m not sure how the logistics work, but the players from China, their salaries from the C.W.H.L. will be the same, and anything extra will be what they’re doing over there and from that team individually.”

Increased pay in women’s hockey has become a key issue in the last year, particularly after the United States women’s national team staged a successful boycott against USA Hockey, its governing body, for equitable support with the men’s program.

The National Women’s Hockey League, which has four franchises in the northeast United States, became a direct competitor of the C.W.H.L. upon its creation in 2015. Since its inception, the N.W.H.L. has offered salaries as high as $26,000 annually.

But in November, as the N.W.H.L. struggled to gain new sponsors, the league had to cut pay almost in half, putting it on par with the C.W.H.L.’s payment structure.

While the C.W.H.L. did not pay its players before this year, it has been successful in growing its league steadily since 2007. It has developed partnerships with N.H.L. teams in Canadian markets and the N.H.L. players’ association; negotiated sponsorships and partnerships with companies like Molson Coors and Tim Hortons; and signed television deals with Sportsnet.